The 71st Macau Grand Prix wrapped up on 17 November, bringing its annual dose of high-speed thrills to spectators braving the relentless rain. Wild weather disrupted several of the event’s seven races, but the skies cleared just in time for the inaugural FIA Formula Regional (FR) World Cup, the four-day event’s most prestigious race. The introduction of FR marks a significant shift for the Macau Grand Prix, which had been synonymous with Formula 3 (F3) racing for nearly four decades. Indeed, the sudden sunshine felt symbolic, as if the heavens themselves acknowledged the start of a new chapter in the event’s storied history.
It was McLaren junior Ugo Ugochukwu, from the US, who claimed victory in the Special Administrative Region (SAR)’s first-ever FR race. The 17-year-old handled the challenging conditions with remarkable composure, starting from pole position and maintaining his lead through all 15 laps. As the high-speed cars whizzed around the Guia Circuit like wasps, weaving between each other and bouncing off the barriers, Ugochukwu managed to avoid several pile-ups – including at the formidable Lisboa Bend, where a crash saw Macao’s only local entrant in the race, Tiago Rodrigues, bow out early.
Ugochukwu, racing for France’s R-ace GP, beat Germany’s Oliver Goethe (part of the Dutch racing team MP Motorsport) and Mexico’s Noel León (of Hong Kong’s KCMG IXO by Pinnacle Motorsport) into second and third place, respectively. His success saw him join the ranks of legends like Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, each of whom won the Macau Grand Prix’s headline race before becoming a Formula 1 (F1) champion.
Speaking after the event, Ugochukwu said: “I can’t describe the feeling, but of course I am super happy. It was quite a tricky race – and I was pushing the whole way. But I was confident with the pace and we’ve had a great weekend.”
Of course, the FIA FR World Cup was not the Macau Grand Prix’s only international thriller this year. The FIA Grand Touring (GT) World Cup was a closely fought battle until two frontrunners veered off track at the Lisboa bend during a later lap. This saw Mercedes Benz driver Maro Engel, from Germany, take the lead with two BMW drivers behind him: Brazil’s Augusto Farfus and South Africa’s Sheldon Van Der Linde. Engel emerged victorious, having defied incredibly wet conditions.
Unfortunately, the rain took its toll on the Macau Motorcycle Grand Prix. Prizes were awarded based on qualifying results, with the UK’s Davey Todd claiming the title.
What is Formula Regional?
FR is a relatively new class of formula racing, introduced by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) in 2019 as a mid-point between the entry-level Formula 4 (F4) class and the federation’s re-jigged F3 format. The restructure has been described by FIA as a “natural consequence” of the sport’s ongoing evolution, which has come a long way since the late 1940s, when F1 cars looked like jaunty four-wheeled sausages. In essence, however, it might best be explained as a rebrand.
For the uninitiated, formula racing is an elite kind of motorsport involving open-wheeled, single-seater cars. These vehicles are visually distinctive, with tyres positioned outside their main bodies and room for just one person inside (in contrast to grand tourers, which closely resemble regular road cars). The formula hierarchy is known as the FIA Global Pathway, with F1 at its top. Formula 2 (F2) is the obvious next rung down, but things get a little blurry when it comes to the third, fourth and fifth rungs.
Prior to 2019, a category called GP3 was the third highest level in formula racing. That was followed by F3, then F4 as the bottom rung. Further confusion can arise due to regional variations in the sport, which we won’t get into here. Basically, as you climb the ladder of progression, formula cars gain horsepower, go faster and become more expensive to operate. In 2019, FIA retired the GP3 class and shifted F3 up to the third slot on the ladder (meaning F3 cars from 2019 onwards are significantly higher spec than their pre-2019 counterparts). The shift meant that the old F3 class needed a new name, which is how FR was born. To put it very simply, FIA’s Global Pathway used to be F1-F2-GP3-F3-F4. It’s now F1-F2-F3-FR-F4.
What does Formula Regional mean for Macao?
The Macau Grand Prix has long-catered to vehicles and drivers on the fourth rung of that ladder. Almost all of its main events have been F3 since 1983, when the late Brazilian racing superstar Senna won that inaugural race. At that time, F3 was replacing a fading class of racing called Formula Pacific. It is worth remembering that the Macau Grand Prix started out as a treasure hunt for local motorists, back in 1954. The event has gone on to add, and remove, different races for different vehicles ever since; it is an ever-evolving highlight of the world’s motorsports calendar.
So, if F3’s reshuffle happened in 2019, why did the Macau Grand Prix only switch to FR in 2024? This is what Macao magazine asked Davide De Gobbi, general manager of Top Speed China, the outfit responsible for supplying FR cars and technical support to the Macau Grand Prix.
According to the motorsports expert, the FIA allowed Macao’s grand prix to continue using the F3 banner as something of an experiment. It’s important to understand this as a temporary upgrade and not the status quo, De Gobbi emphasises. While the race remained F3 in name for 2019 and 2023 (its highest level races were F4s during the intervening years, due to the Covid-19 pandemic), it had actually jumped from the fourth to third rung of the FIA Global Pathway. That upgrade introduced new, more powerful cars to the Guia Circuit, the equivalent of those that had been raced in the now defunct GP3 class.
Ultimately, Macao’s twisty racetrack proved too difficult (and potentially dangerous) for drivers to handle in the higher-spec vehicles. “The cars were just too fast,” De Gobbi explains. The federation decided that it would be best to revert to the Macau Grand Prix’s 1983-2018 structure, bringing back what are now classified as FR cars – the ones best suited to the Guia Circuit. This move bumped the race back down to the fourth rung on the Global Pathway.
According to the FIA, the Macau Grand Prix’s “unique essence” has always been to bring the top junior drivers from around the world together to compete in a one-off ultimate challenge. “The event has historically been a rite of passage for some of the sport’s greatest talents, and the latest chapter of that history will be written in the FIA FR World Cup,” it notes on its website. That chapter is now underway, with young drivers like Ugochukwu and Macao-born Rodrigues following in the footsteps of their heroes. The likes of Senna, Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel: F1 drivers who previously raced at this level in Macao.
